These pages, originally designed for the benefit of potential agents and
editors, are now being maintained as background information for the book.
I hope they also serve as something of a tutorial for emerging writers
on how one can set up an informational site for their manuscript (although
my own experience suggests that the effort might be better spent elsewhere,
although I couldn't say exactly where).

In addition to the Introduction which follows, this page
contains links to several documents:

The Prologue in which we discover that
something significantly out of the ordinary has taken place in
China.

Chapter One opens in San Diego with
biochemist Dr. Richard Kirby preparing to travel to Geneva to
announce a breakthrough in medicine: the discovery of a literal
cure for AIDS based on a novel gene therapy approach.

Chapter Two finds Kirby stopping by
his place of work, Immunological Technologies of San Diego, before
his flight to Geneva. Kirby receives some timely news from the
FDA about the approval of the new drug. But things are not turning
out the way he had expected.

Interview with Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger,
who reviewed the book early on.

So you were lucky last year and you escaped the usual bout with the flu.
Planning to do the same thing this year, of course. Head along to your local
HMO and get that flu shot they so generously provide for free. Well, maybe
you are paying for it, but heck, it's worth every dime. Remember that
time you were out for two solid weeks? Don't want to repeat that again.

As much as we dread getting the flu, the common strains in circulation
today---though they kill upwards of 30,000 people every year in the U.S.
alone---are generally rather tame as infectious killer viruses go. But they need
not be. By the time the Spanish Flu pandemic of
1918 had passed, more than twenty million people worldwide were dead. Some
experts have put the figure at twice that number.

It's certainly comforting to know that this particular strain is gone for good.
But is it? What if it turned out someone back then had thought ahead,
and preserved a sample of the virus? Would we consider bringing it back to life
if we could? For the sake of learning, perhaps, how to prevent a similar future
pandemic? Of course we would. The potential payoff is too great. Scientists would
jump at the chance. Then again, so might less altruistically-minded folk. And
that's one of the core story elements behind
"Ninth Day of Creation"---the resurrection of the 1918 Spanish Flu
virus by a vaccine-cum-gene therapy biotechnology company called Immunological
Technologies, of San Diego.

Sound far-fetched? Well, until recently, we really did think that no one
had set aside a sample of the 1918 microbe. But someone did.
The United States Army, in fact.
Although they weren't aware of it at the time, their habitual collection of
autopsy specimens from U.S. servicemen since the time of the Civil War would
result in the preservation of this killer's genome for the next eighty years.
Rediscovered after all this time, the genes of 1918 are now being sequenced
at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, in Washington, D.C., by cellular
pathologist Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger.

Now, what might happen if during an international crisis that threatened to
topple the U.S. from its position as sole world superpower, the government
reluctantly concluded that that secret biotechnology program might be the
only way to regain the upper hand?